


black space between the stars

by tndrgay



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: 2020 is a mess, Angst, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29268096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tndrgay/pseuds/tndrgay
Summary: It’s not as if he’s some teenage girl with an eating disorder- he’s forty-two, for God’s sake! It’s just that he feels a lot more comfortable with himself when he’s hungry, with nothing between him and his insides. Everyone’s made out of stardust, right? Well, Link’s got the black space between the stars to fill him up.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	black space between the stars

**Author's Note:**

> TW for eating disorders. 
> 
> (˘･_･˘) Friendly reminder that this is an anonymous, no-judgment kink account where I write for prompts that have been sent to me. If you don't like a fic, please remember: Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That's Okay. Just exit out of the page and move on. (˘･_･˘)

Everyone is made out of stardust- this fact comes up on an episode of GMM he can’t remember. Maybe it isn’t even an episode. Doesn’t matter. It’s not important.

It’s not the catalyst for this whole thing, either.

‘This whole thing’, as if this is a fully articulated and realised problem, as if there’s a clear line delineating its starts and things that exist separate on either side of the line; one solid path straight back to the start.

There isn’t, which is why learning _this_ about _that_ isn’t a catalyst. Just one tangible though to pin up a note with- like a hook to hang Christmas lights on, then you get to the rest of the lights and it’s just a tangled mess. That sort of thing. Not _this_ sort of thing.

-

Link has always been a picky eater. That’s one of the foundation stones that make up him, make up their friendship and make up GMM. That’s just set in stone. He doesn’t resent this fact of himself and, more importantly: neither does Rhett. Which means everything’s okay. Everything’s been okay for a long time, maybe that’s why it’s all going to shit now.

-

The _thing_ that is not a _thing_ hasn’t not been a thing since the first “Will It” episode. Rather, it developed as the years went by and more things changed that Link naively thought would remain the same forever. He gets a dog, another kid, a haircut, new glasses…. Not in that order.

Everything in his life starts to charge along as breakneck speed, days and weeks blurring until he can’t tell which is which. This, Link thinks, is the inevitable result of reaching your forties- the descent into death, morbid though that thought is, but he’s actually _happy_ and he’s not ungrateful. So what if some days he eats nothing bar what he has to for the camera? He can control it. Link is in control.

So what it all comes down to is: he can’t control what he has to eat for GMM, only whether he spits it back out or not. But he _can_ control what he eats off camera and he can go some days eating nothing at all, drinking just to fill the spaces between his bones. It’s not as if he’s some teenage girl with an eating disorder- he’s forty-two, for God’s sake! It’s just that he feels a lot more comfortable with himself when he’s hungry, with nothing between him and his insides. Everyone’s made out of stardust, right? Well, Link’s got the black space between the stars to fill him up.

One day, just before March, his head is swimming and Rhett asks out of nowhere, “Hey, buddyroll, you good?”

Link comes back to reality as if a bucket of ice water’s been thrown on him. “Sure,” he replies, taking his glasses off and cleaning them, using it as an excuse to look just to the right of where Rhett’s gaze is burning holes in his flesh. “Just thinking, you know?” He uses some article he saw on MSN about something happening in China.

One month later, boy, doesn’t that just come back and bite him in the ass.

-

Quarantine is _not_ a blessing. He misses Rhett. Misses the Mythical Crew, misses the studio, misses normal life.

If he has to find a bright spot, though, it’s that filming whilst sheltering in place means he doesn’t have to eat hardly anything for the camera. Which means no eating, period.

Of course he doesn’t get _stupid_ over this thing- he recognises that there’s a bare minimum he needs to function a normal human amount and it’s not even like he wakes up every day feeling dirty (further proof that this this whole ‘thing’ is not one of _those_ things) with all the stuff he’s carrying inside of him. It’s only some days.

Hell, by the time they can film in the studio again _properly_ , he’s even started to miss the weird, gross food and the taste experiments, the taste of victory or failure between his teeth and under his tongue, oozing with flavour.

Three weeks. Link lasts three weeks before _every_ thing goes back to normal (hah! ironic) and he’s having to force food down so hard he almost chokes on it.

So, everything goes back to normal and Link kind of stops eating again.

-

See the thing is- the thing is it’s just so _easy_. Circumstances mean group lunches are out; quarantine and shooting schedules and sanitising schedules have changed routines, so he wakes up before anyone else and can eat (or not eat) in solitude. He doesn’t do it so often as to get suspicious, but he times getting home after work right to when Christy and the kids are about to walk Jade. There are nights he goes with them, there are nights he doesn’t. Either way: he doesn’t eat.

Link’s quite happy with how 2020 is concluding, for the most part, when one day Rhett eyes his plate over their desk and asks- _again_ \- if he’s okay.

Looking down, he sees his ordered his food into nice, even lines and hardly eaten a bite. “Sure,” he slaps on a fake grin and takes a bite, making sure to crunch and chew as loud as he can, pretending he’s gotten distracted with his laptop in front of him. He turns the screen round to show Rhett a cat video.

He doesn’t breathe out until Rhett laughs and moves onto another subject.

-

Thanksgiving is always a weird time and the way 2020 has gone hasn’t helped matters at all. So _so what_ if he forgets to eat? Link resolves firmly. They’re _busy_ and he is happy and if he needed to eat so bad, something bad would have happened already.

Clearly. Everything is fine and there’s not a _thing_ to worry about.

“Buddy,” Rhett’s hand on his arm stops him setting out of their office; Link hyper focuses on the touch without meaning to. It burns. The _look_ he’s fixed him with burns too- so hot his insides start to curdle.

He laughs, awkward and high-pitched, refusing to act like he’s done something wrong here, “What?”

“You don’t look so good.”

“What are you talking about, Rhett- is there something on my face? I feel fine!” Which isn’t a lie. Or at least wasn’t right up until this conversation started.

“If you’re sure…”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Okay.” The hand leaves his arm, yet he’s still trapped. Rhett’s eyes try to meet his, that gaze deep and searching for all the hidden depths that you grow after thirty-five years together. “But if there was anything bothering you, you’d tell me, right?”

“Of course I would- _I do_. What kinda question is that, huh?” Also not a lie. The thing which isn’t a _thing_ isn’t actually bothering him if it isn’t actually a _thing_. Which it ain’t.

“I know. I… sorry, man. I guess I’m just a little on edge, lately. Jumpy, you know?”

“Well, nearly the new year, brother. Things are gonna start looking up real soon.”

-

Oh, the irony of that statement, Link acknowledges when three weeks after that conversation he’s on his back on the cold, hard ground, looking up, with nowhere to go except Rhett’s worried eyes. He gets a nought point two second glimpse of the ceiling of the office before the world goes black.

-

Passing out, it transpires, isn’t all that fun. And not nearly as dramatic as they make it seem on TV. Paramedics are called, though they don’t do more than sit him in the back of an ambulance with a blanket and a blood pressure cuff and tut over his ‘blood glucose levels’. Link nods in all the right places, doing his best to look chastened, agreeing whole-heartedly when they suggest he doesn’t _quite_ need to go to the Emergency Room. What surprises him most is how silent Rhett is throughout the whole thing. Oh, he’s _there_ ; hovering over the paramedics’ shoulders as unobtrusively as a man of his size can. But words from his mouth there are not.

The paramedics leave and Link lets the crew fuss over him briefly, until one by one they filter out and leave just him and Rhett in the studio.

Unable to avoid it any longer, he looks over at his best friend and when their eyes meet the empty hollow feeling he’s been cherishing in his gut roars and devours him whole. Link knows what the expression “blood turned to ice” means now. It means the full throttle of Rhett McLaughlin’s _rage_.

“Um,” he starts. It’s the wrong thing to say. That’s as far as he gets.

“You. Told. Me.” Low and steady and so, so cold. Each word bitten off before he loses control. “You said you were fine.”

“Well, I-“

“This ain’t fine! You _collapsed_! You- fuck, are you even gonna tell Christy about this when you get home?!”

Guilty as charged.

Rhett must see the answer in his face, because his own expression changes- in all their friendship, Link’s never seen him look quite like this before. It’s intense. And scary. He scoots his chair back, which is also the wrong thing to do.

“Tell me what the hell’s going on here, Link! And do not- _do not_ \- tell me you’re fine, because I know you’re not. The hell’s got into you, starving yourself?”

“I don’t-“ he stammers, because he really doesn’t. Really.

“Bullshit.” All of a sudden they’re very close. It’s like being face to face with a wild animal, especially now he’s grown his hair long. “I’ve been watching you and more’n that I _know_ you. I know when you ain’t been eating- hell, the way you look a blind guy could tell! What’s the matter with you?”

Link feels the monster turn into a rage of his own; done with eating his insides and it’s not enough, it’s hungry for more, _he’s_ hungry for more. He’s gotta get out before he says something he regrets. “Nothing’s wrong with me, Rhett. If you don’t believe me you’re calling me a liar… and if you’re calling me a liar you’re not the guy I thought I was friends with all these years.”

He runs out of their office and down the hallways, relishing each slam of a door against his palms. Ends up in the driver’s seat of his car in the empty parking lot, panting hung over the steering wheel and blinking black spots from his eyes. “Fuck.”

He’s got some apologizing for that last comment, when they’re finally on speaking terms again. If Rhett ever wants to speak to him again. And even if he does, that’s assuming he ever wants to discuss anything other than this _thing_ ever again. “Fuck.” Link slumps back in his seat and buries his head in his hands, unable to come up with an excuse. That’s the thing about having a secret so long- you get comfortable, like nothing can go wrong. Start getting complacent. Then when someone goes and rips the wound open again, there’s no way to justify the mess and scar tissue they’re looking at.

 _Fuck_ indeed.

Now Link might no longer consider himself a Christian, but he still believes in epiphanies, even if you do have to put in the work yourself, and now seems as good a time as any. He _thinks_. He thinks long and hard for… He doesn’t know how long, but long enough that Rhett hasn’t left the studio yet once he’s finally reached a conclusion, even though the sun is starting to go pink and he can detect the hum of traffic growing louder as the minutes tick into rush hour.

Either he can choose not to talk about this, or he can lose his best friend. That’s just about the heart of it.

As awkward and ashamed as the idea of talking about it makes him feel- even just alone in his car- no way is it comparable to the pain he feels at the thought of a life without Rhett.

Still, he’s not quite ready to go and face the music just quite yet. A thought occurs to him, as sudden as a bird appearing in the sky out of nowhere. (Rhett likes birds.) He tries to see this whole thing from Rhett’s perspective and… quickly stops trying to do that. Yeah. Ouch. Okay. What now?

-

Link steps out of the car and is just about to go back inside at the same time Rhett opens the door and steps out into the parking lot, looking for him. They both freeze for a second, then chuckle- it _is_ kind of funny, the way they’re always in sync with each other even now.

Rhett comes a bit closer and Link feels guilty when he sees his eyes are red and glassy. This whole scene still feels like a Mexican Standoff, though. “I, uh, I was…” Trailing off, he nods to the passenger side and Rhett nods back and gets in. 

Inhaling deeply, Link pushes his glasses back up and climbs back in himself, buckling his seatbelt and realising Rhett’s turned the radio on. He risks a glance across at the other side of the car, at his best friend of all these years who’s doing his best not to look back at him in turn. And Link makes a choice.

He leans over and switches the radio off, then waits for Rhett to cotton on and meet his eyes. It’s only for a second, before shame coils in his gut and Link has to turn away again. A second later, he hears Rhett’s own worried inhale.

He doesn’t start the car. “Rhett,” he can’t tell if he’s speaking loud enough to be heard or not. “I’m- I’m sorry, man. And… there’s things I need to tell you. Thing that- things I think I need a little help with.”

Less than a second later, Rhett’s hand is on his shoulder. He sighs in relief and it turns into a sob and Rhett grips tighter. Link opens his eyes, almost manages a smile, and starts to talk.


End file.
